When Negotiations Go Wrong

For most professionals, negotiation is standard operating procedure: receive a job offer, respond with a counter-offer, and then engage in a little back-and-forth until the parties arrive at an outcome that satisfies them both.

But sometimes negotiations go spectacularly awry. The higher-education blogosphere has been on fire this week since a young philosophy professor’s offer of a tenure-track job was rescinded after she started what she probably assumed would be a typical process.